mercatornet.com
2024-05-27
Azerbaijan's ethnic cleansing of Nagorno-Karabakh has left over 100,000 people displaced, struggling as refugees in Armenia and facing upheaval, homelessness, and unemployment.
Nagorno-Karabakh is a landlocked region in the South Caucasus that has been at the centre of a protracted conflictbetween Armenia and Azerbaijan for decades. Underlying the geographic dispute are deep-seated ethnic and religious tensions, with Armenians predominantly Christian and Azerbaijanis predominantly Muslim, alongside historical grievances dating back to the early 20th century.
A Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast was established under the Soviets in 1923 which was populated with 95 percent ethnic Armenians. In 1988, anticipating the end of the Soviet Union, the regional government signed a resolution to rejoin Armenia.